To Bed
by emmiemac
Summary: As Sansa watches her daughter being put to bed following her wedding feast, she reflects on the feast and bedding she had, and the one she didn't. Just a futurefic drabble hoping to will a happy ending.


_DISCLAIMER: This story is entirely based on character[s] from George R.R. Martin's _A Song of Ice and Fire

**To Bed**

"It is past time to put these two to bed!"

The cry came out of the back of the great hall of Winterfell, the Greatjon wheezing and pounding his cane into the floor as many voices took up the cry.

Sansa watched now as her eldest daughter Catya was surrounded by her new lord's friends, blushing and trying to cover herself from being stripped in the hall. But she was laughing too, her smile tremulous but her eyes shining as she glanced at her husband: her beautiful daughter happily married.

Ser Loras Tyrell, though Sansa with incredulity, remembering how she has once idealized his uncle in her early days in Kings Landing, how her heart had fluttered at the sight of the Knight of Flowers. Garlan the Gallant had named his firstborn son for his younger brother, in part because he knew the knight of the Kingsguard would not have sons of his own and because Loras had been so grievously wounded and burned on Dragonstone during the War of Five Kings.

Her heart wrung inside her at the thought of that ruinous war, even after all these long years, to remember all she had suffered and lost. _Father. Mother. Robb. _Her own years of torment as a hostage, beaten and humiliated as the daughter and sister of traitors and forced to marry against her will. Joffrey has sent up the cry to put them to bed that night; Tyrion had stuck a knife in the table and threatened to geld him. Within a short time he, and she, would stand accused of regicide in Joffrey's death.

She had forgiven him; it was only courteous after all. He had tried to stem Joffrey's abuses when he was Hand and had promised to send her home once the war was over, that is until his father Tywin became Hand and forced them to marry, plotting to gain Winterfell and the North had she given Tyrion a son. But he had not forced himself on her as was his right as her husband; he had even told her he had not wanted the marriage, though he had wanted her: he said that to her on their wedding night once he had seen her undressed.

_In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers._

But even now she shuddered to remember her hopeless humiliation at what they had done to her, her sad resignation to duty and her determination to be courteous and brave in the face of what she had then thought would be the rest of her life. But she had escaped.

Tyrion had returned to Westeros with the Dragon Queen as her Hand and advisor, prepared to restore the Targaryen dynasty to the Iron Throne and take his revenge on his own family. He had sent out for any word of her which caused her worry and fear but she was safe in the North by then, with Winterfell reclaimed and her younger brothers returned from what was thought to be the dead. She had feared that he wanted her back as his wife though she had already tried to have her marriage invalidated: she had not truly consented and it had never been consummated. But she had required his acquiescence and Tyrion had granted it graciously. And he had used her knowledge of Joffrey's poisoning, as related to her by Littlefinger, to have them both acquitted of complicity in his death. He had offered a toast to their freedom, and told her she was now free to marry whom she chose. She had replied by raven, thanking him for his generosity and good wishes. She had assumed he was equally relieved to be free. But when she met him again short years later at the wedding of Aegon Targaryen, yet another thought dead and returned, to her equally long-lost sister Arya, he had gazed at her longingly and told her she was lovelier than ever, and struggled with his hurt and his Lannister pride when he brought himself to ask her why:

"_Clegane_? Truly Sansa, did you need to settle for the _second _ugliest Westerman in the Seven Kingdoms?"

Then he had looked past her to where Sandor followed to take her into the wedding feast.

"I hope you are happy," he said, looking at the ground before her feet. "I hope you are both happy," he added and waddled away without looking at Sandor.

"Bugger the Imp," he'd scoffed, "let him have his dragons; I've got my Little Bird."

But if her choice of husband had confounded Tyrion, it was Daenerys who had confounded them all. She chose to abdicate in favor of her nephew Aegon, making Arya queen, as Sansa had once hoped to be. She had had to bite down on her lip to keep from laughing at her sister's shock. Arya Stark, now Targaryen, was Queen-consort to the King of the Iron Throne; Sansa Stark, now Clegane, was married to the Hound and living at Winterfell in the North, helping Rickon to rule as Lord Stark. The reversal was too ridiculous to ignore, and yet it was right for both of them.

Daenerys had confided to her family that she was barren, and that a throne needed heirs. So she kissed her nephew and his new queen, swore her fealty and retired to Dragonstone with her dragons, the last of her khalasar and her Tyroshi paramour, satisfied that her family's throne had been restored by her efforts and sacrifices. Though still young, Daenerys Targaryen, the Dragon Queen, had become the subject of songs and legends. And after the coronation, Sansa was relieved to once again be leaving Kings Landing, this time with her husband, never to return again.

She turned now to find Sandor for reassurance, to remind herself he was with her now, but he was looking at their daughter in the midst of the crowd of young men carrying her off, his face stern and almost threatening. She thought if he had been armed, he would have hacked his way through them to rescue her and keep her safe forever.

Poor Sandor, she realized tenderly, helpless to see his daughter wedded and bedded. She remembered putting their first babe into his arms herself, so full of pride and love for him, and seeing the amazement and wonder in his face and his eyes when he looked down at the sleepy, dark-haired face wrapped in blankets and then back to her. He had never thought to have her, much less a child with her. He had probably not thought to live long, intent as he had been on one day killing Gregor and nothing else; and now he held his future in his hands.

Throughout the years she would often catch that same soft wonder and amazement in his eyes when his daughter ran to him, arms open and laughing happily. She adored her father. _Papa Dog_ she had called him once she learned the name of the animal of his sigil which he still wore on his tunics and armor, though he no longer went by the Hound. Catya wanted to be held, to be picked up; she hugged his legs and climbed into his lap and nestled in his arms, she wanted a kiss goodnight and she wanted to hold his hand when they walked anywhere. She looked him in the face and smiled, and traced her small fingers over his scars, never flinching or looking away, as Sansa had, at first and for a long time after. Even at the altar of the sept today, she had kissed her father's burned cheek when he walked her forth and gave her to be wed to the young Tyrell knight.

His daughter was his first true unconditional love, she thought, at least since his own sister. She had offered to name their child after her but she saw the pained line between his eyes and said no more. He had offered Catelyn; she had teased him by suggesting Arya and though he had snorted and sneered at the thought of another she-wolf, their daughter was a lot like Arya. She had Sandor's looks more than any of their children: the black hair and grey eyes, and though she outwardly showed her mother's gentleness and soft courtesies, she was as fearless as her father had taught her to be, flinching from nothing and becoming a bold rider under his tutelage. She was as much like her aunt the Queen as her father. And so it had been fitting that they had compromised on the name Catya. Within short time, their sons followed: tall, strong boys who loved and respected him; but it was Catya who had truly gentled the Hound's heart.

Now the first child he had held in his arms would be in the arms of another man.

She walked over to him and reached for his hand and held it in both of hers. She saw the muscles in his neck working as he forced himself to swallow his grief. Sansa remembered that when she had been lost to him, she had never yet been his. Catya had always been his.

"We never had a bedding," she reminded him.

He finally looked away from the doorway leading to the stairs. His mouth twitched and his brow quirked slightly.

"Didn't we? I remember our bedding, Little Bird: we didn't have all these hands to help, but I never wanted them. I wanted you all to myself," he rasped closely; then he raised her hand in his and kissed it firmly, though his eyes never left hers. "Would a pack of drunken sots putting us to bed have made you remember better?"

She flushed even now to remember their first time together in the tiny abandoned cottage deep in the woods. They had travelled the back roads and paths to reach the North, staying far from the Kingroads and villages. He had been her protector, her sworn shield and then her lover. They had put their bedrolls before the crumbling hearth and undressed each other clumsily beneath furs: his intense, almost reverential desire and her timid excitement coming together. She remembered the closeness, the sweet yearning and the pain. Only later did she think on his trembling and his clenched teeth and realize he had been holding back, fearful of hurting her, and trying to be gentle. Soon their passions were matched: whether laughing and playful or wordlessly lost in each other, they knew joy and deep contentment and then they had their children. They had been married in the godswood at Winterfell before her annulment from Tyrion had been finalized: the few gathered Northmen had been as heedless of a marriage performed in sight of the new gods as they were of one decreed by Lannisters. They had even determinedly overlooked her swelling figure during the brief moment she had shed her cloak for Sandor's and made no call for a bedding, letting them retire unobserved. As she turned to see the young revelers carry her daughter and new husband up the stairs, she prayed their daughter would have the same passionate tenderness and love she had found with her non-Ser.

She looked back to him now, smiling softly, and reached to push back his hair, still black but shot with strands of grey, and to caress his now weathered face and neck, finally resting her hand on his chest. She stretched up on tiptoe to bring her lips almost to his and look into his eyes.

"I remember everything, Sandor, and would not change a thing: not that night, or all the days and nights and years that have followed."

He looked at her intensely, taking in her face. She knew he saw the little lines in the corners of her eyes and the strands of silver in her auburn hair but he still called her _Little Bird_, or even _girl_ when he was testy or his leg pained him too much from cold or from training in the practice yard. He would need a cane someday, she surmised; but that someday was still far off. He was still strong, still her protector and her lover.

He lowered his forehead to hers, almost angling to brush his lips over her mouth.

"We have another night ahead, Little Bird," he murmured low in his raspy voice, "shall we join the revelers, or shall we to bed ourselves?"

Sansa smiled even more brightly now and sighed happily.

"To bed," she whispered warmly to him.

FINIS

**A/N: I had originally left out the reference to Sansa marrying when already pregnant for fear it was OOC but then realized they would never have waited on Tyrion or a southron septon to validate their union. My ears burn to imagine Sandor's cursing on that subject...**


End file.
